Blessings For Others and For Me

      Maybe it’s just my outlook on life.  Maybe I’m just getting more philosphical     in my advancing years. Maybe I just feel privileged to be alive.  But now that it has been nearly three weeks since the auto accident that could’ve taken my life, I feel the need to reflect on the blessings that I and others have received as a result of my misfortune.  This posting will be divided into two parts: the blessings others have received, and the blessings I have received. 

I want to thank so many folks who have sent warm wishes and thoughts to me in a variety of ways as well as those who have prayed   on my behalf and have placed my name on temple prayer rolls, something that LDS people do which accesses the faith and prayers of those attending the temple.   And most of all, I wish to thank God for preserving my life—again—and now for beginning the    process of healing my body.

OTHERS 

-    Given the opportunity to think about someone besides themselves

·    Given the opportunity to feel empathy or sympathy and thus be concerned about me, or the opportunity to be concerned that someone they know is concerned about me

·    Given the chance to offer service by sending cards, flowers, dinners, visiting me, or calling me

·    Given the chance to reflect on the fragility of life

·    Given the chance to appreciate what it’s like to not feel physical pain or soreness

·    Given the opportunity to realize how blessed/lucky not to have been involved in such an accident

·    Given the chance to verbally interact with friends, associates,  or family about me and my situation, and often with Ann

·    Given a reason, or yet another reason, to connect with God on my behalf, through prayer or fasting

MYSELF

·    Given the opportunity to learn to be dependent, to rely on others, to feel gratitude

·    Given the chance to realize how blessed I was to have good auto and health insurance

·    Given the opportunity to see how well our health system can work and how well trained doctors and nurses can be

·    Given the opportunity to see how well first responders do in such a triage situation 

·    Given the realization of how blessed I am to live in a country in which there are first responders that arrived quickly

·    Given to be able to access pain control medication

·    Given to know again that physical suffering allows me to appreciate the times when I don’t feel pain or soreness

·    Given to know how much suffering I saw in the hospital and how blessed that I only had some fractured ribs with some bumps and bruises

·    Given the realization that God preserved my life and has allowed me to continue living

·    Given to know again how God is involved in the details of my life and the lives of others

·    Given to know again the power of Priesthood prayer

·    Given to know again the power of my personal prayer

·    Given to know the blessing of having friends and family who are concerned about me

·    Given to know again the constant, unwavering love and caring of my siblings and their spouses

·    Given to know again the constant, unwavering love and caring of my children, and my grandchildren for “Mumpa” or “Pumpa”

·    Given to realize again how blessed I am to have such a wonderful, caring, protective, thoughtful wife

All of these blessings occurred to quite a few people because one person was distracted for a brief few seconds by a stinging wasp and ventured unknowingly and unwillingly into my car’s path.  I have no doubt but that God knew that was going to happen, since I have faith that He is all knowing.  He must have known that the person whose vehicle hit mine, his family, along with my family, friends, acquaintances and people who know of me but who do not know me personally--and I--needed some of the blessings listed above.  What a loving, gracious, merciful God He is!

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Passive-Aggressiveness and Me

One of the challenges in my adulthood and in particular to my 34-year marriage to a strong woman has been to transition from being passive-aggressive to more open about my feelings.   My passive-aggressive nature was nurtured in my family of origin where at times my feelings were not honored or appreciated, and sometimes manipulated, and then perpetuated through the years of my adulthood as I would be passive in many of my interactions with Ann.   Passive aggressiveness is composed of two words: passivity and aggression.  Passivity originates when we do not value what we are wanting or feeling and place more value on the wants or feelings of another (usually someone close to us) and as such do not give voice to our wants or feelings.  Aggression manifests when the unexpressed, non-assertive feelings are “set off” by an event, and anger or rage comes out.

In my marriage, I used to feel that Ann was superior to me in many ways and that her truth was, indeed, superior.  Even if I felt that her truth may not be correct, my shame (not valuing who I am) kept me from saying what I wanted or felt.  

The aggressiveness would manifest itself in me with anger that often would be out of proportion to the event that triggered it.  It wasn’t that I would rage; I’m not that kind of person.  But my fuse was short and it didn’t take much to set me off and become angry.  That anger came out at times toward my children, probably because I was in a position of power—a vertical relationship—and as the saying goes, “water runs downhill.”  It ran downhill onto them. That anger has been a source of guilt and shame for me.  It would also occasionally come out in as I drove in traffic.

Complicating matters, I perceived that my religious values taught that anger was not appropriate; that somehow keeping your feelings to yourself was some kind of a virtue.  It was almost a source of pride that I didn't see myself as an angry person—most of the time.

So as an adult married to a strong, assertive woman, with an upbringing of stuffing feelings, and a system of values that I thought valued such behaviors, I was not open about what I felt.  I got to a point where I realized that I had a short fuse.  I got to a point where the scope of my anger would surprise me.  I got to a point where I realized that stuffing feelings was not in my best emotional interest, and that for me to be a better husband and father and a psychotherapist—and be effective in those roles—I needed to be more forthcoming.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Anyone who gets to know me realizes that I do have feelings, and that I often wear my emotions on my sleeve.  I am quick to cry if I am touched by someone or something.  I see myself as being very empathetic, a necessary attribute for a psychotherapist in my opinion.  But the passivity was a blind spot for me.

I have learned that passivity was very damaging for me.  I am learning that I can be assertive and give voice to my feelings without blasting Ann or anybody else out of the water.   I am learning that it is okay to want, to need, to be okay with conflict, to be okay with disagreements.   I am learning that if there is a divergence of opinion on a subject, even delicate subjects, that it is important for me to send an “I message” to the effect of “when you say/do this, it makes me feel ____,” or “I feel strongly that we should ____.”   I am learning that when I do that, I feel freedom, and freedom from shame.

As I have gotten better at doing this, I have noticed more peace and serenity in my life.  I have noticed that I rarely get angry, and when I do, it is okay to feel it and to express it in a forthright but respectful way.  My fuse is much longer these days.  I still wrestle with some strong emotions at times while driving, but I am noticing that more often than not, I am the person who did the wrong action and deserved the toot on the horn.   

I admit to being in transition with this part of me, to being a work in progress.  But I have noticed significant progress and change in my life.  Yay for me!!!

The Ability to Empathize

                Recently, a heavily armed young man strode into a midnight showing of a movie and commenced to indiscriminately shoot innocent theater goers, killing 12 and wounding scores of others.  

                This past weekend, another man—referred to as a white supremacist, shot seven Sikh worshipers and wounded others.  

Lest events like this become too commonplace so as not to give one pause, I wanted to briefly share my thoughts and feelings about these senseless acts and what I figure answers the “why”; how could someone do something so heartless and cruel?

                As I watched cable news reporting about one of the the killing sprees, one of the stations asked one of their pundits, a forensic psychologist, to opine about the “why.”   This particular man has over 20 years of experience, much of it attempting to figure out motives and reasons of mass murderers.  Because I am a psychologist in my own right, I was interested in what he had to say.  What he said really rang true and made sense to me, especially because in my profession I am an observer of behavior.

                  Simply stated, he posited that the reason why people can commit atrocities is that they have lost their ability to empathize.   Combining his explanation with my own, some time in their past, something happened in their lives—likely in their childhood—that emotionally hurt them to such a devastating degree that for self-preservation they had to shut down emotionally; to bury that hurt and dissociate from it because it was too painful to feel.  When one shuts down that feeling completely, one doesn’t feel (and doesn’t want to feel).   

                 Sometimes the loss of empathy can occur because of a political or religious belief.  Such was the case with the terrible tyrants of the 20^th century like Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Mao Tse Dung, Sadaam Hussein, Charles Taylor, Idi Amin, and Papa Doc Duvalier who were responsible for the slaughter of well over 100 million people.  They likely considered the people they slaughtered to be less than human.  They and those that carried out their evil killings lost their ability to empathize.   I would submit feeling empathy is a God-given ability, but in them it was completely extinguished. 

                Empathy involves me acknowledging that you have a right to be.  It involves caring for others.   It involves an emotional attachment with those around us and valuing them.  It involves feeling on some level what others might be feeling, and respecting that.  

                Losing our ability to empathize as humans is a terrible thing.  I am convinced that the men who perpetrated these barbarisms have lost that humanity.  We who remain hopefully do feel empathy, and our hearts are saddened and we mourn those whose mortal lives were snuffed out and whose families will be scarred for the rest of their lives by these evil acts.